Oct. 5, 2012

Thakorbhai Patel immigrated to the United States from India in 1989 and settled with his family in Fort Collins. His wife, Puspaben, recently received a letter from Secretary of State Scott Gessler calling her voter eligibility into question, although both husband and wife have participated in the last three presidential elections. Patel was photographed in his home on Friday, Sept. 28, 2012, in front of a photo depicting his four brothers and their families, all of whom are US citizens. / Dawn Madura/The Coloradoan

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Puspaben Thakorbhai Patel laughs with her grandsons Ronak, 2, and Nayan, 6 months, as they take a stroll in their neighborhood Sept. 28 in Fort Collins. Puspaben and her husband, Thakorbhai Patel, immigrated to the United States from India in 1989. / Dawn Madura/The Coloradoan

Fort Collins resident Thakorbhai Patel and his wife, Puspaben, cast their first ballots in American elections in 2000, the year they both gained legal citizenship.

It marked the culmination of a long journey that began in India and included Patel’s attainment of a doctorate in physics, all with the aim of providing a better life for their two sons, now grown.

By all accounts, the Patel family’s tale is the quintessential American-immigrant success story. Patel is the oldest of five brothers, all of whom have attained graduate degrees or succeeded in business, and the generation of the family behind them overwhelmingly followed suit.

So the Patels greeted with confusion — and some measure of offense — a recent letter from the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office calling into question Mrs. Patel’s legitimacy as a registered voter. She was one of 3,900 Colorado residents who received notices under a crusade by Secretary of State Scott Gessler to cleanse the state’s voting rolls of noncitizens.

“I was shocked,” Patel, a 68-year-old researcher who has been employed at Colorado State University since 1989, said. “What is this? We are voting since last three (presidential) elections.”

Attempts to reconcile the matter online at the website suggested on the letter from the Secretary of State’s Office were fruitless. It simply opened a voter registration page without any mechanism to assure the state that Mrs. Patel, 66, had been legally voting in the country for a dozen years.

The letters asked recipients to verify that they are citizens eligible to vote or to voluntarily withdraw as registered electors.

“Many people who may have gotten this letter, like my wife, are genuine, legal citizens of the United States, paying taxes,” Patel said.

Mrs. Patel enlisted her husband, who handles business matters for the family because he is more fluent in English, to contact the Larimer County Clerk and Recorder’s Office. He promptly settled the issue by proving his wife is a naturalized citizen.

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But the experience left Patel bewildered about the basis for the inquiry, suspicious that political motives belied it and worried that it would limit participation in next month’s election by immigrants who endured many challenges for the right to legally vote in America.

“I think he would be equally upset if (Mrs. Patel’s) vote were canceled out by somebody who was ineligible, and we don’t want that either,” said Rich Coolidge, spokesman for Gessler’s office.

Patel, who, along with his wife, is a registered Democrat, said he is suspicious that Gessler, a Republican, is seeking to suppress voting among Democrats and minorities by targeting immigrants who at one time or another used noncitizen documents to obtain drivers’ licenses.

“They want to frustrate the people and keep them away from voting,” Patel said.

Coolidge dismissed Patel’s suspicion that a the secretary of state’s motive was partisan.

“To insinuate that we targeted a particular political party is totally mistaken,” he said.

Patel frets households without someone who is fluent in English or willing to navigate the complexities of verifying their eligibility to vote will simply sit out the election.

“That is my greatest frustration, that they will not do anything,” Patel said. “They will think, ‘Forget it. I don’t want to go for voting.’ That is the ultimate thing that will happen.”

“I have never read that there is a big fraud in the voting,” Patel said. “Then why the hell just suddenly you are thinking there will be voting fraud?”

Gessler cross-checked about 1,400 of the 3,900 residents that his office mailed letters to against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security database, which revealed 141 of them were noncitizens. Seven of those who were identified reside in Larimer County, and 35 of those non-citizens had voted in Colorado.

Of the 141 voters found not to be citizens, 57 were Democrats, 16 were Republicans, 60 were unaffiliated and the rest belonged to smaller parties, according to Coolidge. Of the original 3,903 voters who received letters questioning their citizenship, 46 percent were unaffiliated, 40 percent were Democrats, 12.5 percent were Republicans and 1.5 percent belonged to other parties.

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“We have a lot of people questioning the motive and what we’re doing without any evidence to support their claim,” Coolidge said.

Colorado has more than 3.5 million registered voters.

Larimer County Clerk Scott Doyle, a Republican, has said since Gessler launched the campaign that he expected it to turn up minimal levels of abuse, but he recognized that the intent was to root out any measure of fraud.

“I think there was an awful of lot resources put into this that could have been used other ways,” Doyle said. “Had the secretary of state blown the lid off of some large-scale conspiracy in this state, everybody would applaud that. The prediction early on was there was nothing but a very small number from me, and it looks like that’s what happened.”

Coolidge said the secretary of state’s office has not conducted specific accounting of what the effort cost.

“It’s really part of our general duties,” he said.

Patel said legal citizens, particularly those whose eligibility as electors was questioned, have a duty as well — to clear their name with the local county clerk and participate in the election.

“If they are legal, they should do it and vote,” he said. “Go for voting rather than getting frustrated.”